


Falling simultaneously at different speeds

by juiceboxjellyfish



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Canon Compliant, I wrote this while sleep deprived from writing my other fic, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Light Angst, Longing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, Pining Crowley (Good Omens), Repression, Yearning, so I'm sure it's a masterpiece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 02:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20074279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juiceboxjellyfish/pseuds/juiceboxjellyfish
Summary: Despite the fact that Crowley and Aziraphale started falling for each other at virtually the same time, their experiences were drastically different.AKA Crowley has been pining since the beginning of time and Aziraphale takes like 6000 years to realise he's in love.





	Falling simultaneously at different speeds

**Author's Note:**

> Someone please take my laptop away at night so I can't impulsively write Good Omens fanfic instead of sleeping

Despite the fact that Crowley and Aziraphale started falling for each other at virtually the same time, their experiences were drastically different. It only makes sense that they would be, the pair had drastically different backgrounds after all. 

Crowley was already used to falling by the time he fell for Aziraphale and saw no reason to deny the obvious. His fall from grace had been unintentional and frankly more of a vaguely descending saunter than a fall. Falling in the angelic sense was of course not a literal fall, but if it had been, he would already have been halfway to the ground by the time he actually fell. Falling for Aziraphale was much more instant and much more intentional, though he hadn’t been aware of how persistent his feelings would be when he dove into them. Knowing might’ve held him off for a while, but nothing could’ve stopped him. Having already (intentionally or not) rebelled against everything he was made to be, Crowley had no reservations about loving an angel. Sure, hell wouldn’t like it, but when has hell ever been an authority on what’s right and wrong? Questioning the way things were done in heaven didn’t mean agreeing with the way hell did them. So Crowley approached the angel, and the angel admitted to disobeying God in an attempt to help the humans, and Crowley fell again. 

Aziraphale took a bit longer to catch on —a lot longer, in fact— but he started feeling it right there, standing atop the wall to Eden, as well. As the first storm in the history of the earth approached, a fondness he had yet to identify or even acknowledge compelled him to stretch his wing out, shielding the demon next to him from the rain. It took him a long time to think of this as anything more than just an act of general angelic kindness, but giving into that impulse was the start of something bigger than he could possibly imagine. They stood there side by side, an angel and a demon, watching the first rain ever pour over the dunes.  
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”, the demon asked. Aziraphale turned around to face him, shocked that a demon was capable of expressing such a sentiment, but found that the demon seemed to be admiring the rain in genuine awe and decided not to express his surprise.  
“It is indeed.” 

Crowley spent the following centuries slightly confused and highly frustrated. Decade after decade passed, and he couldn’t seem to let go of the angel. They only rarely ran into each other, and yet Crowley found himself constantly thinking of Aziraphale. He’d allowed this to happen to him not considering the consequences, and he hated himself for it. Sure, he had no issues with loving an angel, but it wasn’t like the angel was ever going to love him back. Besides, he hadn’t anticipated that he’d keep loving the angel for this long. After making the quite frankly idiotic decision to fall for him in the first place, Crowley intentionally distanced himself from Aziraphale for nearly a millennium hoping the feelings would go away, but they didn’t. So he sought out the angel in Mesopotamia and was immediately reminded of all the things he fell for in the first place, and he realised that trying to let go was pointless. With this realisation came the yearning. Falling was easy, repression was pointless, and yearning was painful. All Crowley wanted was to get closer to Aziraphale but the closer he got, the more it hurt. 

While Crowley spent centuries desperately grasping at something just out of his reach, Aziraphale remained blissfully ignorant of his own feelings. There were hints, of course, but he never picked up on them. He was aware that he felt a certain fondness for the demon, but he was an angel. He felt fondness for most people, just by design. It wasn’t until they made the Arrangement that Aziraphale actually started thinking of Crowley as a friend rather than an acquaintance he kept failing to be enemies with. He had to admit that the change was a relief, as he had quite enjoyed the demon’s company from the start. 

The Arrangement was disguised as nothing but a way to make their respective work easier, but it meant more than that to both of them. For the ever-yearning Crowley it was a way to spend more time with the angel without risking what he viewed as an inevitable rejection. For Aziraphale, who had yet to acknowledge his feelings, it was an excuse to let the demon into his life. Neither was aware of the other’s motivation, and Aziraphale was barely aware of his own.

If Crowley had had any proper friends apart from Aziraphale, they might’ve described him as lazy. Other demons wouldn’t, but that was only because he was constantly lying to them about the amount of work he did. Most angels wouldn’t either, but that was only because Aziraphale was constantly lying to them about the amount of time he spent thwarting Crowley’s wiles. Aziraphale definitely wouldn’t, but that was only because Crowley wasn’t lazy when it came to him. Crowley loved sleeping and he loved taking credit for the work of others to get out of working himself, but he would drop everything to help Aziraphale, because he loved the angel more. 

Due to rather incredible amounts of repression, it took Aziraphale five thousand nine hundred and forty-five years to realise what Crowley knew before their first conversation was over, but he got there eventually. More precisely, he got there in 1941, not long after a certain demon blew up a church to save his life. The selflessness of Crowley’s actions were just catching up to him when he realised he’d forgotten the books. But Crowley hadn’t.  
“Little demonic miracle of my own”, the demon stated, smiling ever so slightly. As Aziraphale took the books, every ounce of fondness he’d been unknowingly repressing for the past six thousand years washed over him at once, emptying his lungs and pausing his heartbeat. 

For Crowley, falling was easy. For Aziraphale, nothing had ever been harder. These feelings had been forming in him for nearly six thousand years, but that didn’t mean he was ready for them. The realisation that he not only loved a demon but had loved him for millennia was more than he could handle, more than he could ever be equipped to deal with. Moments ago his feet had been firm on the ground and now he seemed to be falling endlessly and yet, nothing had actually changed. 

Aziraphale’s fall for Crowley was similar to the demon’s fall from grace in that it wasn’t ever intentional, and wasn’t really a fall until the very end. It was also similar in that it completely unraveled his view of the world. Crowley was a demon, but Aziraphale didn’t think of him as bad — he hadn’t for years. Crowley had offered him a lift home, and he followed him to the car in a trance. He could fall for this. If he acted on these feelings and heaven found out, he could be banished. The thought of falling scared Aziraphale more than anything else, and yet he spent the whole ride to his bookshop imagining acting on his feelings. 

Twenty-six years later, the pair found themselves together in the same car again, and Aziraphale was handing Crowley a thermos.  
“Don’t go unscrewing the cap.”  
All he was really admitting to was not wanting the demon to get hurt, but Aziraphale felt like the gesture had bared his entire soul for Crowley to see. Crowley examined the thermos.  
“Is this the real thing?”  
“The holiest.”  
“After everything you said.”  
Aziraphale nodded, and the nod felt like a confession of things too delicate to be spoken. So little was actually being said, and yet he had never felt more vulnerable.  
“Should I say thank you?”  
“Better not.”  
“Well, can I drop you anywhere?”  
“No, thank you.”  
Crowley frowned. He too was aware that this was bigger than the thermos, bigger than either of them dared to admit out loud.  
“Oh, don’t look so disappointed”, the angel said. (but how could he not?) “Maybe one day we could… I don’t know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.”  
One day. Why not today? Why not now? Why this eternal waiting? How much longer would he have to yearn?  
“I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you wanna go.”  
“You go too fast for me, Crowley.”  
And the angel left. 

Too fast. To Crowley, who’d been longing for anything at all to happen between them for millennia, the sentiment was unbelievable. Everything he wanted had been out of reach for so long, and now it’d been dangled in his face only to be pulled away at the last second. He drove home in silence, and his flat felt emptier than usual that night.

Aziraphale left the car feeling transparent. He was convinced that anyone who looked at him would be able to see the conversation replaying in his head. In the twenty-six years he’d had to get used to his feelings, he had come to the conclusion that demons probably weren’t even capable of feeling that way. Despite the fact that it hurt him immensely, he found some comfort in the idea that there was no use in acting on his feelings as Crowley wouldn’t be able to reciprocate. He couldn’t fall for having feelings if he never acted on them, right? But he’d felt something in the car. Was it possible for a demon to love? 

What hadn’t been spoken in the car continued to remain unspoken, and neither Crowley nor Aziraphale brought it up. Crowley because he was afraid of going too fast, Aziraphale because he was afraid of most possible outcomes. Neither brought it up and both worried they’d been reading too much into it. They continued sticking to the Arrangement for a few decades. Every so often, they went out for dinner together. Nothing changed. Crowley was still yearning, and Aziraphale was still too afraid to yearn. The only difference was that both of them were painfully aware that they would be capable of being closer than this if they could just dare to be a little vulnerable. 

They’d been falling for each other at different paces for most of earth’s existence, and by the time they finally caught up to each other the earth was supposed to have ended. Luckily it hadn't, and neither had their story. They sat there side by side, an angel and a demon, watching a bus pull up to the stop.  
“I suppose I should get him to drop me off at the bookshop”, Aziraphale said, because that’s what they did. They finished their jobs, then they went their separate ways.  
“It burned down, remember?”, Crowley reminded him gently. While the loss of his books felt like a punch in Aziraphale’s stomach, he felt a sense of relief at the reminder. Maybe this time didn’t have to be like all the others.  
“You can stay at my place if you like”, Crowley offered. Aziraphale wanted to. He wanted it so badly, but his instinctual response escaped his lips anyway.  
“I don’t think my side would like that.”  
Crowley looked at him.  
“You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do.”  
Something took off in Aziraphale’s chest. He hadn't felt this light in centuries.  
“We’re on our own side”, Crowley stated, and he was right. 

As they sat down on the bus, Aziraphale reached out and grabbed Crowley’s hand. The demon was paralysed for a moment and Aziraphale nearly let go, worried that he’d gone too far. He turned to make eye contact with Crowley and found that he was already facing him, wide eyed and visibly flustered.  
“Is this okay?”, the angel asked, looking at their intertwined fingers. Crowley brought Aziraphale’s hand to his lips and kissed the back of it ever so lightly.  
“Yes”, he whispered, and they were finally falling together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! I think I'm gonna have to keep writing Ineffable Husbands, 'cause there was a joke I wanted to make but couldn't smoothly insert into this due to the timeline, so stay tuned for that I guess!
> 
> Please do tell me your thoughts on this in the comments 'cause that always makes my day!


End file.
